All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation

I was not alone.

My dismay, of course, was partially symptomatic of the form. Coming-of-age-tales, bildungsroman, come to their tautological ends when their subjects reach adulthood. But embedded in the structure of both literature and life was the reality that for women, adulthood—and with it, the end of the story—was marriage